Gibbs' disdain

There was no percentage in Robert Gibbs' offhand attack on the "professional left," which will serve to irritate people who could be helpful and fuel a distracting narrative.

But a key thing to understand about Obama's presidency is the unusual relationship between the former Illinois Senator and the traditional Democratic infrastructure of power. Most candidates build their campaigns by courting one constituency -- auto-workers, Asian-Americans, tech executives, etc. -- at a time, often for many years. But Obama had no shot at most of these groups. Hillary Clinton had been courting the key components of the institutional party -- most of big labor, members of Congress, the civil rights establishment -- for decades. John Edwards had tacked far enough left to win the allegiance of anti-war and anti-trade factions.

Obama -- making a virtue out of necessity -- didn't bother with much of the deal-making and courtship because he didn't have a chance anyway. He focused instead on building an alternative infrastructure of his own supporters, and even an alternative online structure that largely went around a liberal blogosphere that was very ambivalent about his post-partisan posture and nuance on Iraq.

So Obama went into Iowa with, for instance, no major union support. To the extent that he owed a debt to labor, it was to internal SEIU figures -- like Patrick Gaspard -- who had kept that juggernaut neutral. He had positioned himself against Clinton on the war -- but was not the overwhelming candidate of prominent anti-war figures.

After Iowa, everything changed. UNITE HERE and, then, SEIU backed him to the hilt. He inherited Edwards' liberal institutional support. He became the clear alternative to Clinton's past support, and refusal to apologize, on the war.

But after Iowa, from the vantage point of Gibbs and others who had begun two years earlier, was very late in the game. If you were with Obama before Iowa, you were making an investment. If you were there after Iowa, you were jumping on the bandwagon, going with the frontrunner. You would still incur gratitude -- but the risk you were taking just wasn't the same.

Ultimately, the organized left got on board, of course. They couldn't do anything else and many -- like MoveOn, which vastly expanded its email list -- enhanced their own strength in the process. They worked hard for Obama's election.

But Gibbs' dig is a reminder that at the heart of this White House is a belief that Obama is president despite the Democratic Party, not because of it.